Small grants do matter! Random Access Music’s Queens New Music Festival and Queens soprano Judy Kellock and Renaissance Charter School’s production of Vanraj Bhatia’s opera Agni Varsha received 2012 QAF money for projects happening this weekend. Both were listed in the New York Time’s Arts pick of the week.

Do you have a cultural program that needs funding? 2013 Queens Arts Fund applications are due October 11, 2012. Awards of 1-5K are available for artists and arts organizations based in Queens for projects happening in Queens.

Help give away $3mm for your favorite NYC historic place!

Today, American Express and the National Trust for Historic Preservation announced the official launch of a very cool initiative in the New York City area – New York’s first-ever citywide grassroots preservation effort!

Partners in Preservation will provide $3 million in preservation grants for local historical sites. Planners started with a list of more than 500 worthy sites, and they whittled the list down to 40 competing sites, representing all five boroughs.  Go online and find out who the 5 sites in Queens are! You can vote for your favorite place once a day from April 26 until May 21, and the top four vote-getters will receive their full grant request.

Queens Council on the Arts is proud to support this program. Our very own Executive Director, Hoong Yee Lee Krakauer, joins other civic and preservation leaders of New York City on the Partners in Preservation Advisory Committee. The Advisory Committee will review the votes of the remaining sites along with each site’s monetary and preservation needs to determine how the rest of the $3 million in grants will be awarded.

Go to facebook.com/PartnersinPreservation or PartnersinPreservation.com to explore the sites and cast your votes! You can also follow along on Twitter.com/PartnersinPres.

About Partners in Preservation: Since 2006, Partners in Preservation has awarded $6.5 million to nearly 100 preservation projects in San Francisco, Chicago, New Orleans, Boston, Seattle and the Saint Paul/Minneapolis area. In addition to raising awareness for important historical sites, American Express and the National Trust hope to inspire long-term local support and interest in these preservation projects.

Voting starts 11:01AM ET 4/26/12, ends 11:59PM ET 5/21/12. Must be at least 13 to vote. Limit one (1) vote per person/email address per calendar day. See Voting Terms, which govern, for complete details.

Don’t have plans? Looking for a place to enjoy culture and have a good time in Queens? Then join us for an exciting evening of literature, music and food from Eastern Europe at tonight’s Queens in Love with Literature (QUILL) event: Translating from the Old World to the New from 6:30-8:30pm at DaMikelle Restaurant (102-39 Queens Boulevard in Forest Hills, R train to 67 Ave).

Featured authors Anya Ulinich and Boris Fishman address the cultural and literal translation of Eastern European immigrants to America with excerpts from their forthcoming works, while Margot Leverett and the Klezmer Mountain Boys transform the traditional sounds of Klezmer music into foot-stomping bluegrass tunes in a real-time transformation of the old world to the new. Light refreshments provided by DaMikelle Restaurant and Lagunitas Brewing Co..

Admission is $10 and seating is limited so be sure to REGISTER in advance!

This program is presented in partnership with the Hevesi Jewish Library at the Central Queens Y. QUILL is funded by the New York State Council on the Arts and National Endowment for the Arts.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Over the past couple of years, I have had the pleasure of serving as the professional development coordinator for Queens Council on the Arts.   I have always felt that it is imperative to arm artists with practical skills that can help them promote the impressive work that they accomplish.  The workshops have been varied including the upcoming Grant Writing Workshop to Social Media and Marketing Skills. I have felt fortunate to bring these programs to you.

But for me the greatest benefit of this work was becoming aware of the amazing and varied artists from Queens. You are a fantastic group of very talented people.  As a collective, you have inspired me.  Are there artists in this community who inspire you?  Share your favorites in the comments section!

QCA and Cultural Strategies Initiative Invite You to a Town Hall Meeting

Come join artists, community boards, citizens and other creative thinkers at a brainstorming session to kick-start change and take hold of the narrative of change to describe a thriving cultural ecosystem.

To get the conversation rolling, we will pose the questions, “What exactly is civic engagement and how does it pay off?” “How do we better engage our community?” “How do local artists fit into this picture?”

We want to hear your experiences and opinions. So voice them on April 16th! RSVP here.

QCA is thrilled with the work of all of artists-in-residence in the SPARC Program. They have been hard at work on their projects since January, and we wanted to give you a quick glimpse of some of their work and participants from their respective centers. Residencies last through July, but may end before. Alejandra Regalado’s photography exhibition will be on view from June 14 – July 14 at the IRPHE Senior Center in Elmhurst. This exhibition will be free and open to the public. The rest of our artists are still finalizing the dates for their programs. Please check back in a few weeks when we’ll be posting these dates + more photos!

In March as part of QCA’s ongoing skill building series, we hosted  David Gscheidle from Ajax Union to discuss the benefits of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), or more simply, how to get people to find you when they type something into Google.

If you weren’t able to join us for the workshop, or even if you did and want a reminder, we have shared some of Dave’s tips below.

Help Google find your website by doing the following:

1)      Use keyword in your text

2)      Keep content fresh. Blogs are great!

3)      Earn links from other sites

4)      Drive traffic to your site

5)      Use a Google Sitemap

6)      Don’t be sneaky: show Google what humans see

7)      Don’t rush it. SEO takes time

Have you been using SEO?  Leave a comment about what has worked for you.

The Guggenheim Museum presents Transhistoria the third edition of stillspotting nyc, a two-year multidisciplinary project that takes the Guggenheim’s Architecture and Urban Studies programming out into the streets of the city’s five boroughs. This year Queens is highlighted with a tour around Jackson Heights.

Storytelling artists include René Georg Vasicek, 2011 Queens Arts Fund recipient, and Maria Terrone, an original participant in QCA’s Individual Artist Initiative.

stillspotting nyc
Transhistoria
Sat and Sun, Apr 14–15, 21–22, 28–29, and May 5–6
2-hr tours, 11 am–7 pm

$10, $8 members
Tickets at stillspotting.guggenheim.org

How does one find calm and inner peace in a bustling environment such as Jackson Heights? Take a storytelling tour to experience four readings of newly-commissioned works by Queens-affiliated narrators, including renowned poets, priests, and authors in spaces selected by the architects at Solid Objectives – Idenburg Liu (SO – IL).

It’s a spring awakening! Two major Queens based galleries are holding an open call to visual artists.

Partial proceeds from these exhibitions support Queens Council on the Arts

Going Green II, the second annual group exhibition of Crossing Art in Flushing is looking for entries. Open to local and international artists who have innovative artworks and ideas that integrate natural systems with human patterns while celebrating continuity, uniqueness and place making. Artists should submit artworks that explore contemporary meanings of “green”. Click here for information.

Reis Studios in Long Island City is accepting entries for the inaugural exhibition 10″ by 10″ as part of the 10-year anniversary AND the grand opening of the second LIC ARTS Open Festival. Artists are asked to create at least one individual artwork on 10′ by 10″ surfaces provided by Reis Studios. For more information click here.

Elias Khoury © 2010 Beowulf Sheehan/PEN American Center

On Wednesday, March 28, the MFA program in Creative Writing and Literary Translation at Queens College will present a symposium on the literature of the Middle East and those who write and translate it. This symposium is being presented in conjunction with Archipelago Books, publisher—among many others—of esteemed Lebanese writer Elias Khoury, who will be giving a keynote address at 6:30 p.m.

The symposium- which is free and open to the public- features writers and translators working in the literatures of Turkey, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Palestine, and Israel, as well as the United States- including past QUILL artist advisors and featured artists. Given the excellent group of participants, it is guaranteed to be a day of rich conversations. Symposium events begin at 11am with readings by current Queens College graduate students and continue until 6:30pm with the key note address. For a full list of event details and locations, click here. For words from the event organizer and past QUILL artist advisor Susan Bernofsky, check out her blog Translationista.

We hope to see you there!